D(po)IY!

As I designed, printed, and prepared our STDs for their grand voyage with the USPS, I came to an important realization about the wedding planning, my overall level of craftiness, and where I plan to go from here.  Simply put... I'm not a DIY bride, by any stretch.  But that doesn't mean I'm totally inept with creativity, vision, and execution.  Ergo, I've decided I'm a D(po)IY bride, which stands for Do (part of) It Yourself!  I'm not rushing out to my nearest craft store to buy every last supply I could ever need for every last project and then squirrelling myself away in my apartment, waging war with hot glue guns, reams of fabric, and lots and lots of glitter.  However, I am interested in adding some extra touches here and there through some low-maintenance but high-quality finishing details.  Sure, others may never notice the little things here and there that are courtesy of this up and coming Martha Stewart extraordinaire, but I'll know, and that's worth something!

My first DpoIY project was our STDs.  As I alluded to in the previous post, I was pleased with how the postcards came back from VistaPrint, but they lacked a little snap, crackle, and pop.  After carefully considering  my options, I decided the best course of action would be to invest in a corner-rounder and make the postcards a little special.

First, a little FYI for the DIY-challenged.  I bought a Fiskars 2-in-1 corner rounder.  I didn't really know what the 2nd mode of the "2-in-1" meant, since I just assumed it rounded corners, period.  Well, apparently I'm a moron and never realized that you could round corners in any number of ways.  Look at this:

The mode on the left makes a subtle, short curve of the corners, while the mode on the right makes a more noticeable, swooping curve of the corners. In the following picture, you may be able to see the slight difference.  The postcard on the bottom has the smaller curve, while the postcard on the top has the larger curve (I think the most noticeable differences are seen when you look at the postcards' bottom right corners). 

It took me quite a while to realize that there was indeed a difference, and that the larger punch still didn't cut off too much paper on each corner.  I liked the look of the larger corners (top postcard) better, so away we went!

I punched and punched and punched, with varying results.  The corner rounder isn't the heartiest device I've ever used, so it got jammed up with corner carnage every couple of punches.  In order to avoid this issue and keep each punch as crisp as possible, I employed the highly-scientific method of shaking the punch frantically after every punch.  Whether it worked or not, I'll never know, but at least it provided me with some mental relief.  Over the course of my punching, I took notice that I had better results if I held the postcards in a certain relative position to the punch.

Holding the postcard in a vertical alignment to the punch like this:

Worked better than holding the card in a horizontal alignment to the punch, like this:

I think I had more success with the vertical versus the horizontal because I was able to more accurately push the corner flush against the internal punching mechanism.  It was pretty much just a process of trial-and-error (and lots, and lots of error).  

After punching all of them, I sorted the postcards based on how presentable their corners looked.  Fortunately, 150 were deemed to be of high-quality, so we had more than enough good ones to send to all of our friends and family.  Like I said above, I doubt anyone is going to open their mailbox and exclaim, "Oh, yay!  A postcard with rounded corners!  Look how great that looks!!" buuuuut I'm still happy I did it.  I thought (and still think) it looks a bit nicer, and it shows a little extra effort went into it.

So there you have it!  I DpoIY'd the STDs; I claim full responsibility, for better or for worse, for the design and corner quality.  I think I could get used to this DpoIY attitude, so hopefully it serves me well in the upcoming months!

Did you attempt any new crafting skills during your wedding planning?  How did it go?

(all photos personal.)